A Craftsman Of Customer Centricity

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

Whether in a stream or a store, Orvis Customer Experience Officer Dave Finnegan seeks a religious experience.

If there’s anything that’s driven from the top down in Orvis company culture, it’s that moments matter. At a recent meeting with his executive team, company CEO Leigh “Perk” Perkins Jr. couldn’t have made that point any clearer. Perkins is a man who spent two years during his 20s circumnavigating the globe in a Jeep (transoceanic portions via hitched rides on oil tankers). More recently, he spent a year’s sabbatical solo-sailing the Caribbean. He’s hiked the Andes. He’s survived malaria. Legend has it, he’s been shot at by militants. And yet in a room full of his peer executives, well-traveled outdoorsmen and adventurists themselves, it’s a salamander that’s captured Perk’s — and the rest of the room’s — attention. As he details the joy of spotting a tiny, albeit beautiful salamander while turkey hunting in a Vermont forest the prior weekend, the “moments” message is crystal clear; it’s the moment you’re in that matters most.

That’s a mantra that Dave Finnegan works hard to apply to customer centricity at Orvis. Finnegan, chief experience officer (CXO) at the company, wants to move you with an experience as much as he wants to be moved by one of his own. Now in his third year at Orvis, you might say Finnegan’s current employer is his ultimate enabler. He was raised in Sundance, UT, by a father hailing from Montana and a mother from rural Scotland. No matter where he wandered as a child, it seemed he couldn’t help but wet his feet in a blue ribbon trout stream. Taken by the fly rod as a child, Finnegan now works for what’s inarguably the most iconic logo in the sport, the venerable 161-year-old brand Orvis, where quarterly board meetings are held in remote mountain cabins and the executive team winds its days down in waders.

While his current professional situation is fortuitous, perhaps even destined, it certainly wasn’t taken for granted. Finnegan’s prowess with a fly rod and his appreciation for wild places notwithstanding, it was his noteworthy 15-year tenure crafting differentiated customer experiences at Build-A-Bear Workshop that landed him his current gig.

I sat down with Finnegan to find out how he got so good at creating brand-specific consumer experiences, and more specifically, experiences that can’t be found anywhere else. I found out that his time at Build-A-Bear played a big role. His leader there played an even bigger one.

Watch And Learn
“When Maxine Clark hired me to head up the IT department at Build-A-Bear, we were operating just two stores,” says Finnegan. He counts Clark, the recently retired CEO and founder of Build-A-Bear, among his life heroes. “She’s the one who inspired me to think about customers the way I do, to observe them and the way they interact, and to treat them accordingly,” he says. Her practicality, in particular, left an impression on him. “We didn’t have a handbook, because we simply defaulted to ‘yes’ at Maxine’s request,” Finnegan recalls. “She used to tell us, ‘There’s nothing the customer can reasonably ask you for that will put us out of business, so just say yes.’” With that sort of latitude at his disposal, Finnegan’s work at Build-A-Bear contributed to a truly revolutionary level of customization and personalized experiences there. In his work then, as it is now, technology is tertiary. Customers and associates tie for first, and processes are developed around their interactions. “I’ve spent a ton of time in stores, observing and watching customer interactions. Invariably, what I’ve noted is that an amazing human interaction is what drives the greatest return. It’s not a touch screen interaction or engagement with an application. It’s an acknowledgment between two humans making a connection.”

There’s more formality than meets the eye to Finnegan’s claim that he’s spent a “ton of time” observing customers in stores. We chronicled the results of that observation during his time at Build-A-Bear in a series of articles about the merchant’s store-of-the-future concept back in 2012 and 2013. The development of that concept was based on an intensive customer observation initiative, and while the ensuing store model boasted some fun and functional technology, its success was more dependent on people and process than it was on hardware and applications. “We were at our measurable best when we successfully facilitated human-to-human interaction in our stores,” says Finnegan. “When I was CIO at Build-A-Bear, there I was advocating for more human interaction and the sparing deployment of technology. There were those who accused me of being antidigital,” he says. In fact, history has proven that nothing could be further from the truth. Human interaction is the foundation of digital’s purpose in commerce and communication, says Finnegan, and social media offers undisputable proof.

“Only once we had determined what sort of a connection and tone we wanted to establish between our associates and our customers did we begin to think about in-store technology and how we were going to design it,” says Finnegan.

"We surprised even ourselves by the ‘concierge’ feel we were able to create by combining good technology with good people. That’s where the magic happens."

Dave Finnegan, CXO, Orvis

“Only once we had determined what sort of a connection and tone we wanted to establish between our associates and our customers did we begin to think about in-store technology and how we were going to design it,” says Finnegan.

Old Brand, New Thinking
When he considered joining Orvis, Finnegan harbored a concern that the brand’s heritage might hold his innovative side hostage. The Build-ABear gig gave him the latitude to hone his startup chops. Orvis, he feared, might prove a creativity-stifling old boys’ club. His first meeting with its leadership team put his anxiety to rest. “It was like walking into a room full of the Dos Equis guys,” he says. “We’re all committed to the history of our brand, but if it’s interesting and innovative, this team will chase it.” Interesting and innovative could have something to do with the integration of predictive analytics and personalization in Orvis call centers and stores. Or it could mean saving the Everglades.

“Perk just came back from a meeting with the governors of several Deep South states, where the discussion centered on our involvement with the Now or Neverglades Declaration and other resources we’ve dedicated to saving the Everglades,” says Finnegan. It’s a simultaneously altruistic, selfish, and capitalist endeavor. The Everglades, and its fish, are suffering. Orvis executives love to fish the Everglades. Orvis sells a lot of fishing gear to folks who also love to fish the Everglades. Okay, it’s mostly altruistic, but the point remains that Orvis, the brand, is far from stodgy and stuck in its ways. It’s in tune with its customers, and Finnegan is making strides toward ensuring that’s reflected in its customers’ experiences.

“The best retail experiences are low- or no-tech,” says Finnegan. They happen when a customer walks into a haberdashery and is recognized by the shop owner, who keeps a little black book of his most valuable customers’ data, or when a child’s face lights up on entry into a store full of teddy bears that they can customize and make their very own. “The kids who visit Build-A-Bear are the most digital native generation in history, but the interaction they value most in those stores is human-to-human,” says Finnegan.

At Orvis, Finnegan admits that, while his company’s store managers beat industry on-the-job longevity averages by a long shot, reliance on human interaction alone simply isn’t scalable in a 100-store enterprise. “Technology won’t replace human interaction, but it can aid and enhance it. It can make it more meaningful, timely, accurate, and clear,” he says. “Tech is just one part of the customer experience-nurturing equation.” That’s his current focus at Orvis. “We have really good people in our call centers and stores, people who care about the interaction,” he says. “We’re working to augment that interaction with personalization — putting data about what the customer has shown interest in, and what they’ve purchased, into the hands of good interactors. We surprised even ourselves by the ‘concierge’ feel we were able to create by combining good technology with good people. That’s where the magic happens.”

The Product Pinnacle
Finnegan says the importance of the product itself can’t be overestimated as another part of that customer experience equation. “All great brands start with an amazing product,” he says, “and products are the innovation engine for our business.” That’s why Orvis is investing in predictive analytics technologies designed to help it determine which existing products are truly successful and anticipate how new products will fare in the market. Of course, the vast majority of products introduced by any company are misses. “Poor product performance feeds cottage industries of markdown and liquidation solutions,” says Finnegan. “Collectively, we don’t often get it right.”

Transformation of that paradigm, he says, will come to brands that can put predictive analytics, crowdsourcing, and consumer insight to work to change their percentage of misses, then identify kickass products, and, finally, put marketing and operations behind the effort to create incredible experiences. That’s Finnegan’s task at hand, to create experiences inspired by experiences. Like a cool morning on an isolated trout stream. Or, perhaps, a chance encounter with a Vermont salamander.